January 2, 2017 By Joseph S. Margai
The rehabilitation, construction and expansion of Fourah Bay College (FBC) campus under the BADEA project is currently facing a huge setback as most of the machineries needed to do the work are being held at the Queen Elizabeth II Quay, east end of Freetown.
The 24-month BADEA project is in its sixth month of implementation after rehabilitation work started in August, 2016. The project is financed by Islamic Development Bank.
“The contractors should have started to do the tiling of all the hostels but we are having a lot of problems with the shipment of the materials needed to do the work. When the contractors went to buy goods for the job, they bought them in the name of the company “SOGEFEL” but the waiver was given to Fourah Bay College and not SOGEFEL,” Sorie Kanu, FBC BADEA Project Manager explained to Concord Times in an exclusive interview on Monday.
He added that on many occasions, he has informed the Deputy Registrar of FBC about the situation, who in turn had written the Port for clearance, disclosing that even the vehicles of the contractors were being registered in the name of FBC.
“We were also having serious problem with the advance payment for the contractors. BADEA finally sent the advance payment on Wednesday 25th January, 2017. The contractors were pre-financing the work since August, 2016. As I speak, the payment has not reflected in the bank account,” he disclosed.
He added that the advance payment should have come at most a month after the implementation of the project but came after five months of implementation.
The FBC BADEA Project Manager said the contractors have started rehabilitation work on all of the hostels on campus, noting that all the defunct doors, windows and tiles have been removed.
He added that, “had it not been for the delay in clearing the goods of the contractors at the quay, the rehabilitation work would have been 70 percent completed on all of hostels.
He noted that for the construction of the new buildings on FBC campus, the contractors have already placed pegs on the areas that would be used for the construction of senior staff quarters, the School of Architecture, the lecture theatre, among others.
He noted that by the end of the week, they will start placing pegs on the area for the construction of the new hostels.
When asked as to when the hostels would be made available for use, he replied that he could not tell because they were with the conviction that if all materials would have arrived, the rehabilitation work would have been completed by now.
“There are lots of containers containing tiles that should be used to rehabilitate the hostels and are being held at the Port. They have been there over two months now. We have worked assiduously to clear about 22 of them from the Port,” he said.